


The Day the Warners Escaped

by Artistic_Arteries



Category: Animaniacs
Genre: 1990s, Character Study, Gen, Light Angst, POV Minor Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:40:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27987840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artistic_Arteries/pseuds/Artistic_Arteries
Summary: Slappy knew the Warner's way back in the 30s and never knew what happened to themuntil they showed up on her doorstep
Relationships: Dot Warner & Wakko Warner & Yakko Warner
Comments: 12
Kudos: 219





	The Day the Warners Escaped

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the Animaniacs fandom, come for the slapstick and critical meta humor and stay for all the pain and suffering we can manage to fit into our fics
> 
> Hi I'm supposed to be writing a paper but honestly this was less depressing than what my paper is supposed to be about.

Slappy has had a long and fulfilled life, her career with Warner Bros. studio might be over, with her simply living in reruns and nostalgia, but she’s doing alright. She’s glad to have some family left, with no kids to call her own, she's happy to take her nephew Skippy for however long her little sister needs. Despite how happy she is with him, however, she always goes back to thinking about how it used to be, dreaming of the lights and cameras and action she craved and had gotten long ago. 

Nowadays she was 'too old’ for Warner Bros' taste, despite them having Granny Emma Webster still working in that new Tiny Toons show. Slappy may have a few more creaks in her bones than Alabama in May, but she still has more raw zany slapstick comedy in her ink than most of these new toons combined. She’s revolted by the quality of just about everything nowadays, from the sugary brain-rotting food to the state of what’s considered comedy these days. It’s like the world has decided to go to hell just for a quick buck. Toons like her used to take pride in their work, their anvils shined and their zany used up to the max every day.

She guesses they just don’t make toons the same anymore. At least her nephew has the bones of a good toon, he just needs some guidance from a master like her. She figures if she won’t get the limelight again, she can at least live vicariously through Skippy. 

Most toons her age retired, most because their show was cancelled but a few because they actually wanted it to come to an end. She thinks about all the other Looney Toons, of course, how could she not? She worked with them for years, after all. But there’s other toons like Betty Boop who she never worked with who were jipped by execs from their cartoons. She wonders what they’re doing, nowadays. Betty Boop had a cameo in that live action movie with Bob Hoskins, but she wonders how truthful the movie was about her life nowadays. 

Her other co-workers had work here and there, cameos and throwback cartoons and side character rolls and such, but for a few of them, Slappy hasn’t seen on screen in anything but reruns ever since the 50’s. Living near the studios has the perks of still seeing most of her old pals, at least, none of them willing to move too far from Burbank in case they ever got a call about a shot in the limelight. 

Thinking back, way, way back, to the beginning of her career, she remembers some of the zaniest Toons she’s ever known. She only knew them for a little while, but she always thought the Warner Brothers were something else. They were there one day, filming cartoons and bouncing around the movie lot, and then the next, gone. After the last of the damage they caused was cleaned up, it was like they were never there. Not even their Buddy cartoons would air reruns, like the studio _wanted,_ to forget about them entirely. 

When she first watched the Who Framed Roger Rabbit movie, she had thought about them. How could she not? A movie with all these old Toons living in squalor or worse, getting offed? While there wasn’t anything in the world like the goop stuff, she still wondered _what if there were anything like that?_ Sure those kids were difficult to control, but if the execs were given the power to kill a Toon outright, would they? 

As it was, the mentality around the Studio was to not talk about them. You wouldn’t be able to get any answers from anyone, so why ask questions? You had to keep your head down or you can kiss your career goodbye, just like them. She hopes they’re doing well, wherever they are. 

It’s a few days later when she gets a knock on the door. 

She opens the door and there, in all their glory, stands the Warner’s. 

They look exactly like they did in the 30s when she last saw them. 

“Oh!” Yakko says, turning to his siblings, “I think we have the wrong tree, sibs.” 

“Sorry to bother you.” Wakko says with a lazy smile.

“Bye!” Dot sings in a cute voice.

“Hold it!” She stops them before they can run off, their feet making skid marks on her patio already. “I haven’t seen you three in 60 odd years and you want to just run off like that?”

They stop their feet and stare up at her. 

“Slappy the Squirrel?!” they cry in unison.

“Yeah who else would it be? Dolly Parton?” Slappy snarks. She can’t believe these kids, looking as young as the day they were drawn and gawking like a construction worker at a pretty lady. 

They stop suddenly, their ears going up and heads swiveling to the side; her ears aren’t what they used to be, so she doesn’t hear what they must be hearing. They yip and rush inside around her, Yakko pulling her inside before Dot closes the door, Wakko placing her sitting chair in front of it. 

“Hey! Where’s the fire?” She demands, watching the three sigh in relief. 

“Pretty sure still at the studio, unless Burbank Fire Department has gotten worse like everything else since we’ve been gone.” Yakko smirks and Slappy laughs; trust Yakko to turn everything into a witty joke. She wonders briefly if he was serious about Warner Bros. Studio being on fire, but decided that the studio could handle it. 

“Alright, why don’t you three tell me what’s going on?” She asks as she makes her way to her chair, plopping down on it and adding her weight to the blockade. 

“We broke loose from the water tower after Wakko ate the lock” Yakko explained proudly as Wakko burps up a comically large padlock still connected to part of a door right on cue. 

“The water tower?! Why were you locked up in there?!” She’s taken aback, utterly confused as to why they’d be in there.

The kids look sullen, all of them silent for a moment before Yakko brushes off the question sourly.

“let’s just say there were, uhhhhhhhh- creative differences.” 

Slappy doesn’t like the sound of that. 

She remembers all the years she worked at that studio, the decades of filming, practicing, and script reading all within a few hundred yards of that water tower. From what they’re not-saying, it sounds like they were imprisoned in there, all while she and other toons who worked with them continued on for years without knowing what was happening right above their heads.

She knew the execs were ruthless slime but to think they would stoop to such a level as to imprison children? She could crack a joke about it not actually being all that surprising, and while it’s not, it’s also not that funny, so she holds her mental tongue. 

“So you busted out, set fire to some or all of the set, and got chased off by Ralph.” She concluded.

“Yeah! What’s with that guy anyway?” Dot asks “He’s fun to play with but even dumber than advertised.” 

“The budget isn’t what it used to be, or the budget for the bottom line, at least.” She adds with a conspiratory head drop. The kids laugh, which makes her think they’ll be okay. If there’s one thing that would really make her worry, it’s the idea of them not laughing or goofing around.

As it is, these kids are pretty broken, not just in the way most zany Toons are, but in a ‘someone call Dr Scratchansniff and get some extra strength Prozac, stat’ kinda way. She could see it in the way they stuck close together and were jumpier than Sylvester in the Scaredy Cat episode back in ’48. 

She lets them spend the night, and in the morning she introduced them to a lawyer who was extremely happy to take their case, gleefully adding all kinds of insane clauses she can’t wait to see the studio jump to fulfill. She doesn’t see the kids for a few more days before they knock on her door again, this time with a proposal. 

After she refused to marry Yakko, Dot asks her if she wanted to join their new cartoon, to which she agreed. She and the kids would be bringing the slap to the stick in the mud that cartoons became, one skit at a time.

**Author's Note:**

> I, like Yakko, need validation.


End file.
